Cloud services Open and closed debate: vertical integration routes prevail

Oracle CEO Ellison (left) and box CEO Levi Levy (right)

Beijing Time October 12 News, foreign media published analysis of the article said, although the cloud computing industry has promised to give customers more choice, but the industrial development has brought two forces of the stalemate, both HP, IBM, Oracle and other giants of the vertical integration services, but also the open strategy of emerging technology start-up companies. Open or closed solutions will be the next major battleground in the cloud services industry.

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Whether the enterprise users will be subject to cloud computing service providers, is also the industry is about to start a war. The two main factions of the war are: one side is a technology giant such as Oracle and HP. These companies have been working for many years and have established good relationships with business users in the process of selling products. The other is a technology start-up company with little seniority. But the advantage of these startups is that they focus on the development of cloud computing products and services, so they are more dominant in technological innovation.

At Oracle's recent annual client meeting, Oracle CEO Ellison Larry Ellison said it would transform the company's operations into cloud computing, bringing hardware and software businesses together and enhancing product safety. Oracle, who has been working for more than 30 years, says that customers can get faster customer service if they use Oracle's Cloud service Suite (infrastructure hardware and Oracle's own related apps). Oracle said the service would not be enjoyed if customers purchased applications from other vendors.

Similarly, HP plans to launch a commercial printer. The product can store printed information in HP's cloud services. Customers can also analyze these print information, but only if they have to use the cloud system provided by HP. In addition, HP will provide a suite of cloud services, that is, the server, data storage and management software packaged for sale.

On the other hand, cloud storage provider Box announced in Tuesday a new service that allows customers with several specific cloud software to share data more widely among them. The starting point of the service is that customers who are SugarCRM by the sales management software will be able to communicate through internal and external collaboration (external collaboration requires permission and technical control), and then share the selected data into Jive Enterprise communication software. Partners in the service include Concur, Cornerstone OnDemand, DocuSign, Eloqua, FuzeBox, NetSuite, Zendesk, and Oracle. But Oracle is likely to only allow the service to share its database because its database products have been widely used in cloud services.

If Oracle and HP want to provide a vertical integration service, then box is to provide a horizontal different application software Integration Services. Obviously, box this service will give customers more choice.

"Our service can lead to optimal solutions," says Aaron Levie, the box chief executive, Allen Levi. Ellison's idea is to buy only Oracle products and services. The box service direction is just the opposite of a single package service. ”

The foothold of the "single suite" service is that customers can provide better service and more functions after they purchase a service from a single channel. At the same time, the packaged service also means that customers are "locked up". If the customer wants to change the service provider halfway, the data migration work is time-consuming and laborious, its difficulty will be very big. In fact, consumers see this in Apple's itunes online music service. itunes is hard to integrate with other online music services. If you are forced to consolidate, the quality of service will decrease.

For corporate users, they are often dissatisfied with their "lock-in" because they have little say in the price of their services after being locked out. On the other hand, given the complexity of enterprise services, enterprise users are willing to be "locked out" because they do not have to consider complex technical issues after locking themselves. From this point of view, "one-stop procurement" nature has its raison.

This "one-stop-shop" market, but it is difficult to let technology start-ups break in, it will also to some extent inhibit the pace of development of technological innovation. Cloud services wants to provide a service that can be easily purchased and accessible to any Internet user. In the case of Amazon AWS Network Services, the service has been able to sell computing and storage services to any company's technology developers without permission from the company's chief information Officer (CIO). So is Yammer, a social networking firm. Due to the great success of Yammer, Microsoft received it for himself.

Whichever way (vertical or horizontal) ultimately prevails, these early pilot scenarios will eventually give way to alliances and unified standards as enterprise users move towards cloud services.

"For now, it's unthinkable to not sell cloud services to corporate CIOs," said Box's levy. "As cloud services take over business computing tasks, cloud providers must give more support to corporate information managers on issues such as security, service functions, and so on." "In the future, both vertical and horizontal options will scramble for markets," said Levy. ”

It is not yet possible to say which scheme performs "best". For the horizontal solution provided by box, the obvious disadvantage is that the services provided by the different cloud service providers, their software design and feel are different. Even if this approach is more beneficial to enterprise users, these different web interface designs are "annoying" to the average employee of these enterprises.

From this point of view, the cloud services interface design and performance of these two indicators, may be to win the cloud service mode of the decisive factor in the war.

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)